Volition is a critically important concept to understand in the bible and the word of Jesus. I want to offer two New Testament examples of what Jesus is saying to us about volition, in the stories of Judas and Caiaphas.
Judas choses to betray Jesus, he can’t help himself. Is Judas following his calling? Perhaps it is sometimes the case that “calling” is destiny. My reading of Judas’s story is that Jesus makes it clear that Judas has a choice: prophecy does not condemn us to bad choices. What is a bad choice? Something that leads to death? Jesus says of the man who choses his betrayal that it would be “better that he would never have been born” (Matthew 26:24). Is this what God created Judas for? Impossible. So we need to look further and deeper to understand the mystery of God’s wisdom in the creation of Judas, and learn from what we see.
What possibilities were open to Judas?
Judas is not the only betrayer of Jesus, simply an extreme and clear example of his betrayal. Peter and the other disciples (except the women*) all betray Jesus and abandon him. Peter, for instance, could have spoken for Jesus or given his life to attempt to save him (he knew Jesus was innocent), but he doesn’t, and (effectively) can’t. When Peter offers his commitment to Jesus, Jesus doesn’t say to Peter, “Get behind me Satan!” as he did when Peter tried to prevent Jesus going to Jerusalem. At this point in Jesus’s story, when Peter insists he will give his life for him, Jesus only says, “you will disown me three times before the cock crows” (Matthew 26:34). “All the disciples” said to Jesus, “even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you” (Matthew 26:35), but the disciples start to fall away when Jesus asks them to sit with him in prayer for just one hour. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, stay here and keep watch with me,” Jesus says to them, but they sleep and rest.
Just as Judas can’t hold back his anger and disappointment at Jesus, Peter can’t find the courage to speak up for and defend his friend and teacher. The difference with Peter, though, is that, after his prophesied betrayal of Jesus, Peter continues to live with the terrible destiny. Peter accepts and admits his humiliation and throws himself at the mercy of God, being at God’s service for the rest of his life. By continuing to live, Peter gives God a chance to continue to use him, even though Peter has to live through the humiliation, shame and misery of his betrayal, post-event. This is a choice open to Judas, even if Judas couldn’t control his initial rage. Once his eyes had been opened and he had seen the reality of the consequences of his actions, God hadn’t left him, because God doesn’t leave any of us.
The difference between Judas and Peter is only that Judas chosesfor a second time to turn away from God and to follow his own path, which isn’t a path of love. Judas choses a path of self-hate and despair. He is consumed with a feeling that — by his own volition and actions — he has condemned himself to be outside of the love of God. But we know the truth, that no-one is outside of the love of God. The only thing that takes us away from the love of God is our own volition.
Who is to say how much “free will” and volition each of us have in any situation, how “easy” one person might have it, or how “impossible” another’s experience might be. This is only a discussion of the depth and complexity of the question of volition, in the knowledge that it does not do us any good to not “judge rightly” (John 7:24). What is true freedom in Christ? What truly is it to listen to and live out the Word of God? What is it to live with a volition which makes our choices fully aligned with the Word of God?
In the example of chief priest Caiaphas, here is a diligent scripture scholar, moved not by emotion and some kind of nefarious plotting, but by sound intellectual reasoning and unconscious prophetic office, to make a decision to do what he believes is indicated as the right thing according to God’s law. All his reading, all his faith, and all his belief lead Caiaphas to decide that Jesus is the “one” who will die for the “many”, one innocent life dying so that the community could live, “one” to bear the blame so that the “many” could be spared.
“He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one.”(John 11: 51-52)
Caiaphas was, in his office of High Priest, mediator between man and God. His prophecy was as much a prophecy as was Jesus’s prophecy, that Jesus would be betrayed by Judas. So Caiaphas, speaking the prophecy, leads the religious leaders to have Jesus executed on the Cross. Caiaphas, an intelligent, reasonable man, considers destiny to be the Word of God, and confidently makes a balanced decision to “sacrifice” Jesus, believing he is making the right choice, according to what he heard from God. Jesus will be sacrificed in the same way millions of first born animals had already been sacrificed to God prior to Jesus’s death. Jesus is the last sacrifice, condemned by God (as a human sacrifice), but not saved by God (like Isaac was). Jesus has to go to his death. And this, Caiaphas’s understanding of the situation, is still at the heart of the Christian faith as it is widely understood to this day.
I question this understanding, though. I question whether Jesus had to go to his death, and whether this was what God really was saying to us in the “prophecy” given to Caiaphas. I believe another alternative is “possible”. Because, had any of us humans prevented the death of Jesus, had (we) the people followed what our eyes had seen, thought for ourselves, and not condemned the Son of God to death in all his innocence — a human sacrifice clearly condemned by God, clearing incompatible with God’s will — then Jesus wouldn’t have needed to die in the first place! Jesus’s death wouldn’t be necessary because we’d already be “saved” because we would already be living in love.
Had anyone said “No! I will not stand by while an innocent man is hounded to his death!”; had anyone been able to go there with Jesus, and not succumbed to their own weaknesses; had anyone said, “I will not judge by the appearances of scripture, I will judge rightly!” (John 7:24), or said, “I will not murder innocence, even if it seems like God is telling me to!” then Jesus would not have been on his own, and the mystical fulfilment of scripture would have been avoided. And that’s not a bad thing. In fact, I believe it is something we are all still called to, because it is the calling that Jesus tells us about in John, as he approaches his death: “A new Commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34). God “requires mercy not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6). We are called to live in Love, to live in Freedom, and to stand up for innocence, to never again let happen an injustice like the murder of innocence that was the murder of Jesus. I celebrate Jesus’s response to his persecution, unto death, but I do not celebrate his actual death on the Cross, at our hands.
This is not meant to be a rallying cry, but just a discussion. What would it be to realise God is not asking us to prevent Jesus from dying, but, at least, to not stand by while it is being done to him — rage against the dying of the light, to use the words of Dylan Thomas. And perhaps this is the meaning of the controversial sentence of the Lord’s Prayer, “Father, do not lead us into temptation”: the sabbath is there for the people, the people aren’t there for the sabbath, or we, too, risk killing the Messiah who appears to us in the least of our brothers and sisters that we encounter every day, in all the creatures of God. And we risk believing we are doing it in the name of God.
How can we live differently?
Caiaphas was apparently forced, by the Word of God, to send the Messiah to his death. He only had the “choice” to do differently to the extend that his eyes had been open to the decision God was leading him to, so that he could have consciously made a different choice, rather than unconsciously submitting to what he is being “told” to do. This is the space for volition. Instead, Caiaphas’s rigid spiritual/religious identity and office were (effectively) used by God to condemn Jesus to death. Likewise, Judas, whose rage and despair were (effectively) used by God to blind him to the consequences and alternatives to his actions.
When Jesus told his disciples that he was going to be betrayed by one of them, each of them has a chance to examine their hearts. Judas, unlike Peter, thinks he is acting for the best, that Jesus is a false teacher. He only feels shame when he realises that he was wrong. Who knows, but perhaps it was the same for Caiaphas after the event, when he saw how Jesus went to his death. It is in the moment of realising we have been wrong that we have an opportunity to make changes. This is also the worst moment for making changes, because we are faced with the immensity of our mistake, which generally comes with terrible shame and regret. We realise that we can’t change what we did. Peter, who has once fallen at his knees before Christ and told him, “get away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”, has the capacity, evidently through practice, of facing his shame, and voicing it to others. Evidently, Judas did not. Today, perhaps we might make space for someone like Judas to voice his shame, and come out of the shadows where he is alone — with Satan — and his guilt. We can endeavour to be there for someone like Judas, and say “no, you can’t undo it, but you are still loved.” Because in that moment of confession, help can be offered, and past patterns can start to be torn down. Evidently, confession in its current form is not enough, as the horrific, catastrophic abuse of innocence worldwide in the Roman Catholic Church makes clear. Sexual, spiritual and other abuse of power and projection onto the innocent is normal in every organisation, but the Roman Catholic Church is an institution built around confession, so it’s clear the current form of confession is not working, or else they would not be one of the worst offenders. So what works? A confession that is brought about to make changes, consciously made, at the risk of losing everything, to a person who loves us but who isn’t going to keep things secret or in the shadows. Then, the confession of guilt explodes the dynamics of the guilty behaviour and a new path is created, one which is made free before Christ. There is no victim of sexual abuse, no innocent abused by power, who isn’t honoured by a true confession of guilt by the perpetrator, “I did this, I need help, and I need to live with who I am, with what I’ve done, and integrate that into my life, shameful though it is.” The abuse will never go away. When we feel it is impossible, and we are doomed to a life of shame, a life in the shadows which we can never escape, we must admit our shame and throw ourselves at the mercy of God. We must discern a way to do this, just as Peter did. Much of this discernment will be done through trial and error, and the making of many mistakes.
We must strive to live differently if we want to avoid living out of the dark, unconscious places inside us where forces can work through us to bad ends. Surely, even if we hear a voice of reason leading us forward, Jesus shows us that we are allowed to speak, and that there is room to listen and respond, to argue and demand something different. God can always fight us back when we get it wrong and generate our own temptations (“Get behind me Satan!”). The word of God is a great mystery to us, and we should not be quick to assume we are understanding it correctly when we seek to turn what we hear into action. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:8, “None of the rulers of this age understood it [the hidden mystery of God’s wisdom], for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.”
We might think that we are trapped in a destiny, so “who then can be saved from it?” but we are told, “with man, this is impossible but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).
*The female disciples, as I have discussed elsewhere, aren’t called to high places, so aren’t so severely tested. The female disciples are, therefore, much more free to live in love.